Chapter Sixty-Four
Emma
Finally, I have the time to spread out the printed copies I’ve made of the screenshots of Joanne’s certificates.
The first one is Piper’s birth certificate. Her father is named as Paul James Stafford. I feel sure this must be the man in the photograph I found. Piper’s name is documented on there as Piper Stafford.
The second document is a copy of a deed poll certificate dated two years ago, when Joanne changed Piper’s surname to Dent. The third and final piece of paper is a copy of Joanne and Paul Stafford’s marriage certificate, where Joanne’s maiden name is stated as Dent.
I assume there must be a deed poll certificate for her too somewhere, changing her married name back to her maiden name.
It’s been a messy process, but now Joanne and Piper are a matching pair, with no untimely reminders of Paul Stafford. The man they used to share their lives with, now deceased according to Shaun.
I open my laptop, and remember for the first time that I haven’t seen Shaun’s laptop lying around since he left home. Joanne bought him some fancy new model, so he left his old one here. I’ll have to have a hunt around for it. Maybe we could erase everything and Maisie could use it for her homework, instead of commandeering mine to search various subjects.
I open Google and type Paul James Stafford into the search bar. I spend a while sifting through the results and clicking on the odd one that looks promising. But all I get are Paul Staffords who are still very much alive.
I amend my search: Paul Stafford+death+Joanne+Piper.
The results load again. This time I hit gold with the first item. A newspaper article from the Yorkshire Post loads.
A man and a young girl have died after falling from a privately owned boat off the North Yorkshire coast. The RNLI confirmed it sent out three lifeboats to rescue the man, Paul James Stafford, from Leeds, and his daughter Bethany, aged ten, who fell overboard from the vessel a few miles north of Scarborough.
Mr Stafford and his daughter were pulled from the sea and flown to James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, where they were both sadly pronounced dead, said North Yorkshire police.
Joanne Stafford, wife of Mr Stafford and stepmother to his daughter, Bethany, was also aboard the vessel at the time and raised the alarm.
The couple have a younger daughter, Piper, who was with a childminder that day.
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch is investigating the fatalities.
My fingers quiver over the keys. I’m in shock as I struggle to join up the dots.
The other child in the photograph… she must be Paul’s daughter, Bethany, as referred to in the article. Now tragically dead, just like her father.
I read the report again, slower this time. The heating is on but I feel so cold, my forearms pepper with goosebumps.
It’s simply terrible… just the worst thing I can imagine to happen to a family. And I am so shocked that Joanne herself was there to witness the death of her husband and his daughter.
I feel physically sick when I realise Joanne’s relationship to Bethany is identical to the one she’ll have with Maisie if she and Shaun get married.
Yet, what were originally facts to discover and use against her now feel intensely personal and terribly sad. I feel ashamed of myself for prying but at the same time, I’m filled with a powerful sense of utter dread.
This is not about me, I remind myself. What Joanne went through, I can’t imagine. What right have I got to dredge up an incident that she wanted to bury? I’m even beginning to understand why she wants to erase the whole event from Piper’s mind.
Still, there’s no time for sentimentality here. That’s a rule I know well from working in the legal system. I’ve taken risks to get the information and I need to finish the job. If nothing else, to put an end to the constant wondering about Joanne’s past.
I search for more results on the accident, but can’t find another article, which is odd.
I’m baffled momentarily, until I remember the ‘right to be forgotten’ rule. The gappy search results are a perfect example of someone applying for information to be removed.
I happen to know, from previous cases I’ve been involved in at work, that removing online historical entries is a lengthy process. Each case is dealt with on its own merit and not all requests are approved.
But it seems as though someone who knew exactly what they were doing has done a pretty good job of erasing the accident that killed Paul Stafford and his daughter from the public domain.
I can understand Joanne wanting to forget the terrible tragedy in her past, but effectively attempting to erase it from history seems a step further than most people would venture.
In true paralegal style, and in the spirit of trying every single loose end before giving up, I enter different combinations, different words, that amount to the same question and the same event.
Finally, I manage to conjure a search query that gets me one more result.
A short report loads, which I stare at open-mouthed before sending it to the printer set up in the office upstairs.
It’s a follow-up article from the original report of the accident in the Yorkshire Post, which confirms that Joanne Stafford, the wife of Paul James Stafford, has been formally questioned by police in relation to his death and that of his daughter.